Tiwest, a major producer of Titanium Dioxide (TiO2), has ordered two SWIRL FLUIDIZER™ dryers from GEA Niro for its Western Australian plant to increase production of TiO2. The dryers are the largest of their kind in the world.

The GEA Niro technology was chosen for its ability to efficiently produce powders of consistently high quality even when the consistency of the feed material varies.

The contract was placed by Tiwest (a joint venture between Tronox Inc of USA and Exxaro Resources of South Africa). The plant, located in Kwinana in Western Australia, currently undergoing a major expansion, hopes to start production using the SWIRL FLUIDIZER™ dryers later this year, and this will raise the plant capacity from 110,000 tonnes/annum to 150,000 tonnes/annum and may later expand it further to 180,000 tonnes/annum.

The raw materials for the manufacturing plant at Kwinana are mined from the sands of inland sites in Western Australian. The Kwinana plant uses Tronox's proprietary chloride process to produce TiO2 pigments from minerals Rutile and Ilmenite. The Tiwest plant at Kwinana was built 20 years ago with tunnel dryers to extract the last of the water from the TiO2. Today this old technology will be replaced with the more economical and energy efficient SWIRL FLUIDIZER™ dryers to deliver the increased production.

The use of TiO2
TiO2 is an inorganic white pigment applied in a wide range of products. The crystals refract light to create a distinctive white brightness and gloss surface of high-luminescence in paints, plastics, magazine papers and many other products.

At the final stage of the production, thin acidic liquor is washed clean. The washing process converts the product into a chalk-like form with limited mechanical strength that breaks up into a paste as it is conveyed. When the paste is too thin or too thick, blockages often occur; Tiwest was looking for a way of avoiding these blockages and producing a less dusty product to make down-stream handling and processing easier.

Significant cost saved by using the SWIRL FLUIDIZER™
The SWIRL FLUIDIZER™ can accept feeds with widely varying viscosities by virtue of its unique fluidizing action. The design of the dryer secures a roulette-like rotation at its bottom that together with a careful control of the fluidizing velocities retain over-size particles within the dryer until they are broken down.

Mr Jerry Lloyd of Tiwest commented: “We identified significant cost savings to be made by using the more efficient Swirl Fluidizers compared to the rather old drying tunnels currently being used.” Further he states “One of the reasons we selected GEA Niro to provide the SWIRL FLUIDIZER™ dryers’ new technology to our plant was due to the truly tenacious way in which their sales and technical team pursued us for product specifications and process conditions to assist the selection of design detail that is best suited to our needs.”

TiO2 processing is an ideal application for the SWIRL FLUIDIZER™ technology
Gail Nasr from GEA Process Engineering Pty Ltd in Australia is the engineer in charge of the project. She said that TiO2 processing is an ideal application for the SWIRL FLUIDIZER™ technology. “The SWIRL FLUIDIZER™ dryers are very much at home in this environment and we are delighted to be supplying the world’s biggest machines to Tiwest.” Gail and her team handle the project execution locally backed up by sales and technology support from GEA Niro’s technology centre in Copenhagen.

Australia has a rich history of producing valuable minerals. GEA Niro first supplied rotary atomizer spray dryers to the burgeoning Titanium Dioxide industry south of Perth over thirty years ago. They still operate effectively today. No doubt the new SWIRL FLUIDIZER™ dryers will be providing reliable service long into the future too.

Read more about the SWIRL FLUIDIZER™ dryers here.